hi, my psu broke yesturday, also took onboard, USB, Sound card. man,,dont ask about it, i was about to hammer that psu. so since my pc cannot reconize USBs, can i take it out, put it on the other computer and transfer files to External HDD?

my HDD(SATA) has Vista, and other computer where i want to connect my HDD has XP(whats it called,,,, forgot, long thick cable).

am i able to boot to xp, and look files on my vista HDD?

Can you be a bit more descriptive?

oh sorry. couldnt explain very well..
ill try my best.
heres my 2 computers
new PC Old PC
320GB vista 200GB XP
Broken mobo good condition everything fine

i want to take my HDD from new pc, and put it in to Old PC. boot XP, and transfer files in 320GB HDD to 200GB HDD(in old PC, because my new pc mobo is broken, does not reconize USB devices.)

this is hard.. hope you got it

You should be able to boot from the Vista buy could run into driver problems. I'd boot from XP and then go to the other drive and copy the files you want

Hook vista drive to xp computer via slave or usb. Then xfer. Booting from vista on xp machine will cause lots of issues.

i know it will cause problem, but the thing is that xp HDD is IDE and vista HDD is SATA

If your old MB supports SATA, then that should not be an issue. You 'might' need to download drivers for your old MB, but XP should be able to find these on its own. You don't mention the XP MB, so hard to be specific

The only other thing to be careful of is the boot order in bios. 200 GB first, 320 GB 2nd...

got it thanks alot, and sorry that im a noob...

We all are, the first time we try things. No reason to be sorry.

If your old computer does not support SATA HDD, then you could get a SATA to USB enclosure. I did a search on google, MWave and Newegg both have one for Approx $30 (Includes shipping).

it supports SATA, 2slots so everything is fine

i got a question, i connected my 320GB HDD to my old computer, on sata1. when i turn on the pc, HDD does not power on, no sound of rising rpm from 320GB HDD, i tried many times, but same results, do i need to upgrade some drivers?. my new computer power ons the HDD after checking the mem, (not right after pc ic turned on) whats wrong?

Sorry, not sure if I should post a new thread or follow this one, but I have just the opposite problem... my HP pavilion a867c with 550 Intel Pentium 4 with HT (3.40GHz), 1.0GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM, 250 GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) crashed with a motherboard failure. Unfortunately, all my important financial and business data and email is on the hard drive with no way to retrieve it (I know, always back up data...lesson learned)...anyway, I purchased a Dell Inspiron 531 with AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual-Core 5600+, 3GB DDR2 SDRAM@667MHz, 500GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) to get me by while trying to figure out what was wrong with the HP. Is it possible for me to make the HP 250 GB SATA Hard Drive a slave to the 500GB SATA Hard Drive on the DELL system without reformatting it so that I can retrieve my data??? I'm quite a novice, so as much information as possible would be helpful...thanks

Yep.